Freelance journalist and Independent political activist, open to offers in both capacities. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Accepts PayPal.

Thursday, 21 May 2009

“Hope I Die Before I Get Old”

But you didn’t, did you, Roger?

On Radio Four today, they filled up almost half an hour with elderly persons repeating, perhaps because they are becoming forgetful, “I can’t believe it’s been forty years” since Tommy.

Well, I for one cannot believe that it has been so brief a period. Or that so many of the participants, in the nature of these things older than the fans, are not only still alive, but even capable of giving interviews, albeit interviews consisting of nothing more than the repetition of “I can’t believe it’s been forty years”.

Needless to say, no one bothered to point out that, while it has its moments, Tommy as a whole is pretentious, overblown, self-indulgent rubbish, and the film is even worse.

The one good thing in this programme was Adam Long of The Reduced Shakespeare Company, with lines such as “They beat him up and made him bleed/They killed his mother and Oliver Reed”. How did he get away with it? Did the makers really believe that he was paying a duly deferential tribute, since nothing else is possible? Yes, they did. They really did.

It depends, I suppose, on whether they had ever heard of the Reduced Shakespeare Company ever before in their lives, even by reputation. If they hadn't - if they'd commissioned the guy sight unseen - then I suppose it's possible that they weren't expecting what they got. If they had, however, even the slightest awareness of how the RSC works - if, for example, they'd ever seen, or been told about, the way the RSC treats England's greatest wordsmith - they might well have expected just such a treatment.

Alas I am old enough to remember "Tommy" first time round and it rewrites History to think it was ever regarded as serious.It was always regarded as pretentious nonsense ...as was Keiths "Excerpt From A Teenage Opera" as was "Sgt Pepper" as was "Magical Mystery Tour" and the Monkees "Head".POP MUSIC tried to re-invent itself as ROCK MUSIC. But basically its just teenage angst.Not to be taken seriously....EVER.

Well, indeed, John. Adolescent self-pity. Forgivable at the time. Even permitting of an occasional re-visitation, so long as the tongue is firmly in the cheek. But that is all.

SHK, they regard The Who in general, and Tommy in particular, as far worthier of reverence than Shakespeare. And they simply assume that so does everyone else. The result this morning was very, very funny.

SHK, maybe they commissioned the Reduced Shakespeare Company without ever having heard of them. It's hard for me to get my head around the concept of commissioning work from someone you don't know exists, but I'm not as clever as David.

I think The Who are sometimes all right, actually. The funny stuff, like Squeezebox. Even Pinball Wizard is a good track. But Tommy as a whole is completely absurd.

And the way people of a certain age go on about it is even worse. It would genuinely never occur to them that any treatment of it was anything less than deferential. On some level, they wouldn't have been able to hear any other attitude. But I certainly could. And did.

Alternatively, they're old enough that the Who, and Tommy, were a big part of their adolescence, and so they think fondly of it while at the same time realising its flaws - hence hiring someone to do a pastiche. It's a crazy and outlandish theory, but it might just work.

You must be about my age. The soundtrack to our generation was, if anything, Britpop, which never took itself too seriously, not even when, as in the case of Pulp, it could quite understandably have done so.

That and stand-up comedy, called "the new rock'n'roll", though not terribly seriously, back in the day.

The comedians, alas, ended up believing that and more about themselves, and being indulged as fonts of wisdom. But that is another, and very much ongoing, story.